Reckless or Responsible? Supremes Halt AZ’s Election-Financing System

But on Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court continued its overhaul of the nation’s campaign-financing laws when it barred officials in Arizona from providing matching funds to candidates for state office who accept public financing. Click here for the NYT article; here for the WaPo article; here for the Arizona Republic article. Click here, also, for the Supreme Court’s one-page order.

Under a 1998 state law, candidates who agree to limit private fund-raising get an initial base of public financing, as well as additional matching funds based on spending by candidates who’ve opted out of the financing program.

In its one-paragraph order, the justices reinstated a trial court injunction that barred those additional payments. The trial court said the payments violated the First Amendment rights of the candidates who opt out of the program.

According to the NYT’s Adam Liptak, the Supreme Court’s stay will probably remain in effect through the state’s primary elections in August and the general election in November.

Richard L. Hasen, a law professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, told the NYT that Tuesday’s order put even more dark clouds over for campaign finance regulation. In January, in the court’s Citizens United case, the justices struck down restrictions on corporate spending on election campaigns.

William R. Maurer, a lawyer with the Institute for Justice, which represents challengers in the Arizona case, cheered Tuesday’s order.

“The Supreme Court’s decision today will allow the 2010 Arizona election to occur without the government placing its thumb on the scale in favor of those politicians who receive government subsidies,” he said in a statement.

But some of the harshest words may have been penned by the folks on the NYT’s editorial board. They wrote:

It seems likely that the Roberts court will use this case to continue its destruction of the laws and systems set up in recent decades to reduce the influence of big money in politics. By the time it is finished, millionaires and corporations will have regained an enormous voice in American politics, at the expense of candidates who have to raise money the old-fashioned way and, ultimately, at the expense of voters.

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